


The River of Tears Has Washed Me Clean

by faicotone



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes & Wanda Maximoff Friendship, Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Old man!Steve is just here for the plot, One-Sided Relationship, One-sided James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Unrequited Love, except it’s mostly bitter and blink and you’ll miss it sweet, mentioned Wanda Maximoff/Vision - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 14:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18802288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faicotone/pseuds/faicotone
Summary: It has been 3 months, since Captain America returned.An old, retired version of him, anyway.Perhaps now that he has passed on the shield, “Steve Rogers” would be more appropriate. Bucky doesn’t feel like it was right, though.After all, he isn’t the Steve Rogers that Bucky knew. Not in the ways that matters.————I wrote this as a personal therapy after Endgame because that ending messed me UP.





	The River of Tears Has Washed Me Clean

 

It has been 3 months, since Captain America returned.

An old, retired version of him, anyway.

Perhaps now that he has passed on the shield, “Steve Rogers” would be more appropriate. Bucky doesn’t feel like it was right, though.

After all, he isn’t the Steve Rogers that Bucky knew. Not in the ways that matters.

 

* * *

  
He was full of shit.

Bucky knew, early on in their friendship, that Steve was an angry person. He may have been calm in the way he acted; speaking softly because his asthma wouldn’t allow for anything else, moving slowly because his heart could fail him at any moment of sudden exertion, but Bucky knew deep down he was fueled by anger.

Angry at the world, for handing him shitty cards after shitty cards. Angry at himself, for not succeeding in spite of it.

Steve hid his anger behind righteousness, values, and patriarchy. Bucky knew, could see right through him clear as glass. Sure maybe some or most of those were truly what he believed in, but the drive behind his action, the bravery to the point of foolishness, that was pure anger.

So Steve would rambled on and on about fighting injustice or a heroic duty, and Bucky would call him out on it, and he would pretend he didn’t hear a single goddamn word and carried on like nothing happened at all.

Bucky used to adore that stubbornness in him. Now when he thought about it, it left an acrid taste in his mouth.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve is sitting by the lake, a sketchbook in his hand.

He draws a lot, nowadays.

Bucky doesn’t want to keep staring, but he has never been very good at controlling himself when it comes to Steve.

He hopes he gets better soon.

“Yo, Buckaroo! You being a creep again?” A voice that has become familiar in these past few years calls out, then the owner of said voice appears by his side.

Bucky doesn’t bother sparing him a glance.

They stand there in silence, both deep in their own head with thought.

“You loved him, didn’t you.” He doesn’t phrase it like a question.

Bucky ponders.

 

After the sun has dipped low, the ray’s turned more red than bright, St—Cap— _Steve_ packs up and moves to the lounge for his daily TV session. He seems to be a fan of prime time talkshows.

Bucky prefers wildlife documentaries and singing competitions himself, but he knows how to record them for later now so he doesn’t mind much. Wanda usually comes watch them with him at 2 in the morning when they both can’t sleep anyway.

In the kitchen Sam is looking at some—thing that he just takes out of the oven disapprovingly, muttering profanity under his breath. Bucky joins him.

“I didn’t.”

Sam stops his verbal assault of poorly cooked poultry and looks at him.

“I did love him, I still do. I didn’t love _him_.” Bucky continues, trying to get the words that he only ever said to himself in the privacy of his own head out in the open, tastes how they feel on his lips.

It’s numbing.

Sam takes off his mittens.

“You know you aren’t making any sense, right?”

Sam still doesn’t get it, so Bucky tries to vocalize what he feels, brows furrowing in his effort.

“I loved Steve Rogers.—“

“Uh huh, I figured.” Sam interrupts him, but Bucky continues speaking anyway.

“—That kid around the corner that can’t even run a block on a good day but still decides to get into fights with racists and homophobes every day of the week. The tiny guy that draws old people for free because he likes that it makes them smile and won’t accept baked goods as a thank you but somehow ends up getting them anyway. The stubborn punk that believes he isn’t good enough no matter what his ma or his best friend says. I loved him my whole life. I never stopped.”

Each word cuts through him like knives. By the end, he half-expects to cough up some blood with how much it hurts, but his throat remains dry.

Sam pulls him into a hug.

Bucky still feels like he doesn’t get it, though. But he can’t bring himself to speak a single word more.

 

 

Later. Much later. He would knock on Sam’s door in the middle of the night, barges in despite his grumbling, sits down on Sam’s bed, and cries.

He would cry like he never did before in his unnaturally, painstakingly long life, harder than when he first recovered from Hydra’s brainwashing and the horror of what he had done all those years came crashing down all at once. He would tell Sam how much he had loved him, how he knew he was losing him when they got back to that camp in 1945, how much he hated that stupid uniform and that stupid shield and that stupid serum and all that it took from him.  
Bucky would cry and cry and cry because it feels like losing the part of himself that even Hydra wasn’t quite capable of ripping away. He would cry for his first, his only love in life that was killed a long time ago, in a different world, by Captain America.

He lets go.

 

  
“Do you ever wish it turned out differently?”

Wanda is curled up by his side, her head on his shoulder and her long hair splaying on his metal arm, her fingers playing with the ridges. It feels warm.

On the TV, a hare outruns a grey wolf. The wolf goes hungry.

“I did.”

Wanda hums.

“Then I stopped.”

She goes completely still next to him.

“You can go back and make it turns out differently now. Lang and Stark gave us that unimaginable power. And some of us did.”

Her long fingers clutch his arm.

“So I thought, maybe I should do it. Do what he did. It seems to work out well for him. So why not?”

“And then I thought about it; what would it mean, when and where would I go back to to make it happens, traced back the steps of our story, all the ups and downs and in-betweens. And I realized.”

“Realized what?” Wanda is looking at him now, eyes so intense he can almost see her power shining through them.

“That I don’t want to.”

“Why?” She immediately asks.

“Because it isn’t meant to be mine.” Bucky takes her hand, holding it firmly in his blood and flesh one.

“Yes, I would get a life I always wanted, with the person I always wanted, and we could lived happily ever after. But in my head I would know, always, that everything I have isn’t mine. That I stumbled upon a cheat code of this life thing and manipulated it to my will.”

“That feels like a lucid dream for me. And I’m done with not being awake for my life.”

“You are terribly stupid.”  
That chokes a laugh out of him. Wanda pats his back halfheartedly.

“But I think you are also right.”

  
They hugs for a long time. And if his shirt ends up more than a little wet and sticky, neither of them mentions it.

 

On the TV, the wolf runs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Alessia Cara - River of Tears.  
> It’s a pretty cool song to help you get over a heartbreak like this one.


End file.
